THE STORY – As a series of perverse scam calls unsettles an idyllic retirement community, a starry-eyed nurse becomes entangled with her mysterious patient.
THE CAST – Cemre Paksoy, Bruce McKenzie, Eléonore Hendricks, Colleen Rose Trundy & Mimi Rogers
THE TEAM – Georgia Bernstein (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
From the masterful opening scene of Georgia Bernstein’s feature debut, “Night Nurse,” a thrilling new cinematic voice is born. Bernstein sets a sensual tone in those first few frames, echoing 90s erotic thrillers with the lingering shot of a coiled telephone cord. In “Night Nurse,” Bernstein eroticizes two concepts that both involve building trust but fall at opposite ends of the moral compass: caregiving and scamming. The film explores the intense codependency of a caregiver and patient relationship through a series of perverse scam calls. Teasing sexual desires and power dynamics out of a retirement community setting, her feature debut reverberates with confidence and bold curiosity.
Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) picks up on a seductive energy when she arrives for her first day as a night nurse at a retirement home. All the employees interact strangely with one another, as though they were part of a cult. Hyper-aware of her mysterious surroundings but excited about the opportunity to help patients, Eleni moves forward with caution. Warning bells go off when she gets assigned to her first resident, Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), who had just been withdrawn from another nurse’s care for inappropriate behavior. Supposedly diagnosed with dementia and struggling with memory exercises, Douglas’s health appears to be in critical need of attention. But there’s a different sort of attention Douglas craves. It involves manipulating Eleni’s role as a caregiver and his role as the “helpless” patient.
More warning bells sound off when Eleni meets Douglas’s day nurse, Mona (Eléonore Hendricks). There aren’t any formal onboarding practices here. Instead, Mona makes two suggestions: “It’s easier to play along,” and “He’s all yours.” There’s something very calculating in the air, and it moves like smoke. Only during Eleni’s first night shift caring for Douglas does the conceit of “Night Nurse” take shape. Behind closed doors, Douglas engages in scam phone calls that prey on seniors for money. During Eleni’s first shift, he makes her play along as a granddaughter who got into an accident. The scam becomes heavily eroticized, played out as a sensual back-and-forth between two lovers. Eleni ultimately matches Douglas’s energy with power moves of her own, showing that she, too, craves a need to be desired.
Bernstein uses this relationship between Eleni and Douglas to explore several engaging themes. There’s a dark side of caregiving that involves exploiting trust and isolation, which both of the lead characters personify. The film expertly shifts between their vulnerabilities, posing the question of who is in control. Additionally, the secrecy and power imbalance in their dynamic are heightened by the taboo on age-gap relationships. There’s a palpable sense of forbidden desire in the room, especially when Eleni and Douglas engage in the scam calls. Parts of their relationship also embody the performative side of scammers; they are in the “business” of selling believability, specifically targeting vulnerable people who want to feel useful. By exploring these characters through an increasingly erotic lens, Bernstein finds visceral ways of showing how intense their desires are.
The cast of “Night Nurse” excels at displaying a performative quality in their characters. Cemre Paksoy commands the screen with an incredibly layered performance, walking the line between seduction and emotional unraveling to give us a fascinating character study. Bruce McKenzie delivers standout work playing a role akin to a con artist, full of contradictory behaviors to accommodate changes in his needs. Additionally, there’s a wonderfully theatrical, heightened element to the film’s visual language. Lidia Nikonova’s atmospheric cinematography makes excellent use of framing, shadows, and lighting. In one of the film’s most beautiful scenes, Eleni and Mona bask in the sunlight of a plant–filled room, as though posing for a painting.
Looming stares between characters, lingering camerawork, and intense closeups also help craft a voyeuristic feeling. There’s a foreboding sense that the nurses are being observed by one another at all times. Bernstein excels at pulling dread from the world she has created and masterfully conveys a sense of thick tension in the air. She crafts an unshakable, nightmarish feeling, one that reminds me of the opening scenes of Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” in which we immediately recognize that something is wrong, well before the danger is presented to us.
The music of “Night Nurse” helps to achieve that palpable tension. The score by Sam Clapp and Steven Jackson heightens intensity with a consistently eerie tone throughout. The sound design makes appropriately suggestive uses of hushed tones and erotic whispers. Bernstein’s film plays mainly in the space of a psychological thriller, but she also employs neat horror elements. Eleni and Mona riding in Douglas’s convertible as they search for new victims in the community feels like the beginning of a horror story. The film also features a phenomenal fade to black, one that truly shakes you to the core and pierces through Elina’s deep–cut desires.
The strange world of Georgia Bernstein’s “Night Nurse” might not be on everyone’s wavelength, and the heightened aesthetic might be alienating. Still, the feeling of alienation is precisely what Bernstein excels at. Her feature debut shines for its uniquely mapped out story, and her distinctively hypnotic style leaves a reverberating impact long after the credits roll.
